


last train home

by wordbending



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Dreams, Dreamsharing, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Other, Song Lyrics, nothing explicit though, some implied canoodling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:08:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24545923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordbending/pseuds/wordbending
Summary: Chara and Asriel take a long train ride... and what better place than a train than to try and unpack your baggage?
Relationships: Chara/Asriel Dreemurr
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21





	last train home

With an abrupt, violent bounce, you feel yourself leave your seat. Blearily opening your eyes, you take in your surroundings and start to ask yourself a few questions. Namely, why are you on a seat? What are you riding? Where are you? _When_ are you? You’ve only seen train interiors like this in cartoons and old historical documentaries, but there’s no mistaking it - the black leather seats, wooden dividers, and the big windows peering out into a long endless desert. There are even huge white clouds streaking across the sky, lit by a setting (or is it rising?) sun. It’s the perfect facsimile of a Western.

It also makes no sense. You don’t remember getting on a train. You really think you’d remember, of all things, getting on a train.

You almost pass over the only other passenger on the train, some part of you thinking that it’s strange that there’s nobody else there - not even Frisk! When you finally look at your, well, trainmate, for lack of a better word, the first thing you notice is the huge, fluffy purple dress. It’s covered from top to bottom in lace and ruffles and is expanding so far outward from them that they look more like Toriel than themselves, and they’re wearing a bonnet their horns stick through and carrying a lacey purple parasol, but you would recognize him no matter what he wore. It’s...

Asriel Dreemurr.

You hold back a snort for about a millisecond before you nearly fall out of the seat laughing, doubling over and clutching your stomach.

“What the _fuck,_ Asriel? Get lost on the way to ye olde Renaissance Faire?”

“It’s _Victorian,_ ” he grumbles, paws tightening on the handle of his parasol. He huffs, rather primly, turning up his nose at you like he really is some southern belle. “And I like it.”

“Oh, no, don’t get me wrong,” you say as you wipe your eyes, though you can’t help but smirk, “you’re still gorgeous.”

Based on the way he’s glaring at you, he’s still annoyed, but you’re immensely satisfied to notice him blush all the same. He’s so easy to mess with.

“It’s just,” you continue, still smirking, “I didn’t take you for someone so _old-fashioned._ You look like your mom.”

“‘Old-fashioned,’” he repeats skeptically. “Says the person in the top hat.”

Blinking, you reach up to the top of your head, surprised to find that there is, indeed, a silk top hat. You’re surprised it didn’t come off when you started laughing a moment ago. You look down at yourself and notice, for the first time, the rest of your outfit - a smart, all-black suit, a tailcoat over a white waistcoat, a ruffled cravat.

Oh, you _love_ it. Whoever picked this for you (even if that was yourself, because you’re not above high-fiving yourself) did a dashing job, and you can’t help but clamber onto your seat and bow overceremoniously to Asriel, extending your top hat up behind your back.

“My good sir,” you say, unable to stop the amusement creeping into your voice. “May I have the pleasure of one’s company?”

“Certainly, my fellow,” he says, and you grin. With significantly less pomp and circumstance, you flop onto the seat next to his. You try to let yourself lie against him, but find yourself flummoxed by his ridiculous outfit.

“How am I supposed to feel your nice, warm fur when they’re wearing this stupid thing?” you comment.

Asriel shrugs.

“Once this train gets wherever it’s going, I’ll have to take it off,” you say, wiggling your eyebrows just in case he’s too oblivious to understand your ever-so-scandalous implications.

He doesn’t respond. He just stares out the window.

“Where _is_ this train going?” he says.

You blink, unsure how to answer.

“Nowhere,” you finally decide. “It’s a train to nowhere, and it will never arrive anywhere, because it came from nothing and it will return to nothing.”

“You pretentious ass,” Asriel says, rolling his eyes, and you grin.

For what could have been just a moment but could just as easily have been hours, you simply lie there like that. The desert gives way to mountains, tunnels, prairies, with no sign of civilization, or even any wildlife, for miles and miles. There isn’t a single sound, except for the continuous chugging of the steam engine and the endless rattle of the train’s wheels. And Asriel’s breathing, of course, slow and steady and comforting, just as it is every night.

There are so many things you want to say to him, but the words aren’t coming to you. Perhaps, for starters, instead of asking the Big Important Questions, you’d ask where you are, or perhaps where everyone else is, or if Japan even has steam locomotives because you’re honestly not entirely sure, but... you’re fine with just sitting here. With just laying here, at Asriel’s side.

It’s Asriel that eventually opens his mouth, not to speak, but to _sing._

_Step in front of a runaway train_

_Just to feel alive again_

_Pushing forward through the night_

_Aching chest and blurry sight_

_It’s so far, so far away_

_It’s so far, so far away._

You sit there and stare at him like he’s sprouted an alien from his chest, too stunned to speak for a moment. He keeps singing, staring out the windows, as if you aren’t even there. His voice is nothing like the soft, quiet voice he so generally uses these days. It’s loud and clear and almost haunting.

_Cold wind blows into the skin_

_Can't believe the state you're in_

_It's so far, so far away_

_It's so far, so far away_

_Who are you trying to impress, steadily creating a mess?_

_Step in front of a runaway train, just to feel alive again_

_Pushing forward through the night, aching chest and blurry sight_

_Aching chest and blurry sight, aching chest and blurry sight_

“What was _that_ about?” you ask at last. “Where did that even come from?”

“You,” he says, and then frowns, as if unsatisfied with his own answer. “Me. Both of us.”

You don’t get it, not in the slightest. But suddenly, you notice that the train is very, very cold, and you look out the window to see that the sun has fallen almost completely behind the horizon. You suppose that answers the question you had earlier.

“You never told me why you hated humanity,” he says quietly. “Even after all these years. Even after everything we’ve gone through. Even when we...” He shuts his eyes. “When we became one, I had no idea what had happened to you.”

The train descends into another tunnel - you hadn’t even noticed the mountain approaching - covering the two of you in pitch-black darkness. You take your hat off and set it in your lap, because if you don’t have something to hold, you don’t know how you’ll stop yourself from shaking.

“Is that why you climbed the mountain?” he continues, his voice echoing unnaturally, like an accusation. “Just so you could feel alive?”

You laugh bitterly. “Oh, I think you already know the answer to that.” You reach out for his paw, but he doesn’t move it away - he just continues staring out the windows. “It was _you_ who made me feel alive again. Not some kind of, fucking, I don’t know, murder mountain.”

“You’re changing the subject,” he says, still not looking your direction.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Asriel,” you say, shutting your eyes and slumping into the seat, letting your head fall back against it so that you can stare up at the rattling, bouncing ceiling of the train car. “What answer would possibly satisfy you?”

He doesn’t answer, of course, and you don’t care. You just keep talking.

“Do you want me to tell you I was abandoned too? Or, maybe it’d be better if I was a runaway? Do you want me to tell you that I was this close to starvation, that I had to steal loaves of bread to survive like some kind of French novel? Oh, wait, maybe I should say... maybe I should say that it was _kill_ or _be killed!_ Or, I don’t know, take your choice - do you want me to tell you that I was _abused?_ Or _beaten?_ Or...”

“You’re hurting me,” he says, before you can finish that horrible thought.

“You’re hurting _me!”_ you shout, practically a scream, your voice echoing even louder than his. Then you realize he was being entirely literal, because you’ve been squeezing his paw like a vice. Your pale hand is blood-red from the pressure.

Oh, what a perfect, stupid, Shakespearean metaphor. Sometimes, for all the poetry that flows through your blood and settles into your bones, you despise metaphors.

“I’m sorry,” you and Asriel say at the same time, and then of course, “No, _I’m_ the...” and then, because you’re both enormous cliches, “I shouldn’t,” “I didn’t mean to,” “I’m an idiot.”

Finally, you both stop trying to speak over each other, and you let him speak first.

“I understand it now, you know,” he says. “At least, I think so. Your hatred of humans, I mean.”

You try not to scoff, even though you know he’s being sincere. You suppose it’s a habit to be skeptical whenever anyone claims they understand you, even if he definitely understands you better than anyone else. You settle for rubbing his paw instead, as a more silent means of apology.

“It’s been six years,” he continues, “and I still want to kill them. All of them. Everyone who killed me... everyone who sealed us underground... everyone who hurt _you._ Whenever I think of what they did to you... whenever I even _see_ one of them... I just want to... to...”

You feel him clench his paws into fists.

“To burn down the world,” you offer. “To tear it into pieces with your bare hands and scatter the remains to the wind.”

He nods, glumly.

“Yeah.”

“That’s not what Frisk would want,” you say, leaning once against his side. It never helps to bring up what Frisk would want, you know. The feelings that you and him share can’t be fixed that easily.

“I don’t care,” he says, as you expected.

“It’s a good thing they’re not here to hear you, then,” you say.

“Yeah. It is.”

The train continues rattling its way down the tracks. You feel like this tunnel should have ended a long time ago. Perhaps it actually did, and it’s just so dark now that you can’t tell the difference between the tunnel and the sky.

“Asriel,” you say, after a long while. “Ree.”

“Yeah, Chara?”

“...It’s hard to have these serious conversations when you’re wearing that ridiculous outfit.”

He snorts, and then laughs, although his laugh is also a snort.

“You don’t look any better.”

“Are you kidding?” you say, as haughtily as possible. “I’m a _refined gentleperson.”_

“And I’m an _upper-class English ma-dame,”_ he says, mangling the pronunciation of ‘madame’ and adopting an accent that sounds uncannily like his mother’s.

“Oh, is that so?” you say, turning the haughtiness up to twelve. “Well, ‘ma-dame’ Asriel...”

You climb out of your seat and stand in the center of the aisles, extending your hand out towards him.

“Will you give me the honor of this dance?”

Asriel laughs to himself, stands up, and even curtsies, the big oaf. You take him by the waist, pressing yourself against his absurdly oversized, probably-hiding-an-enormous-undercarriage dress, and lift one of his arms into the air with your free hand.

Slowly, you begin to dance, stepping back and forth in the cramped train car.

“I have a better song for us,” you announce, and then begin to sing.

_Hand me your hand, let me look in your eyes_

_As my last chance to feel human begins to vaporize_

_Maybe it's the heat in here, maybe it's the pressure_

_You ought to head for the exits, the sooner the better_

_I am this great, unstable mass of blood and foam_

_And no one in his right mind would make my home his home_

_My heart's an autoclave_

_My heart's an autoclave_

_I dreamt that I was perched atop a throne of human skulls_

_On a cliff above the ocean, howling wind and shrieking seagulls_

_And the dream went on forever, one single static..._

“That’s way too sad,” he interrupts. “Of course I’d make your home my home. I’d make your whole heart my home, if that’s what it took.”

“You utter sap,” you say, although you’re touched by the sentiment. You think for a moment. “Fine, how about this?”

_Take the journey_

_No matter where it starts or where it ends_

_Take the journey_

_Someday you'll make it back home again_

_You can try to control the weather_

_But the rain inside you is still gonna fall_

_Days of drought will merely starve you_

_There's no use hiding, we gotta face it all_

He nods. “That’s better.”

You continue, not that you needed the permission.

_Take the journey_

_No matter where it starts or where it ends_

_Take the journey_

_Someday you'll make it back home again_

_Skies are falling all around you_

_Who will protect you from your deepest fears?_

_Take the hand of the one besides you_

_Let the fire guide you 'til the path is clear_

As you continue singing and dancer, not sure how you’re managing to get closer together with Asriel’s dress in the way, you find yourself resting your head on Asriel’s shoulder.

“You know, we haven’t done this since we were kids,” he says.

“We _are_ kids,” you say.

“We’re _teenagers,”_ he replies, petulantly. “It’s not the same.”

Unwilling to belabor the argument, you continue singing the song, until you run out of lyrics and then you’re just resting your chin on his shoulder, your cheek brushing his fur.

“If you wanted to burn down the world,” you say. “I wouldn’t stop you.”

“That’s funny. I’m pretty sure you already did,” he says.

“Oh, no, that was all Frisk’s doing,” you lie, and you can tell by his soft chuckle that he sees right through you.

“It was you who reached out to me then,” he says. “It was you that saved me. Chara, you... you can pretend to be a hardass all you want, if that’s what you think makes you cool...”

 _“Hey._ I _am_ cool.”

“Right,” he says, without sounding like he actually agrees. “Well, you might pretend to be all that stuff... but underneath that hard shell is a fluffy white egg yolk.”

You pull away from his shoulder and stare straight at him.

_“What.”_

“You heard me,” he says, with a grin that’s more than a little mischievous. “Or, maybe, in your case, it’s a creamy chocolate nougat.”

“Are you threatening to eat me?” you say, mock-offended. “And, so help me, if you turn that into a flirt, I _will_ slap you. I refuse to indulge your weird vore fantasies.”

Instead of asking ‘what’s vore’ like you expect, he only grins wider, and oh God, this _is_ his weird way of flirting, isn’t it.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he says. “But Chara, what I’m trying to say is... you’d never destroy the world. You care too much about my mom, and my dad, and Undyne, and Alphys, and Frisk... you could never bring yourself to do it.”

“Maybe I just have some kind of strange sentimentality for you all,” you say. “God knows what you all did to deserve it.”

He hugs you tightly, and at that moment, you want to admit to him everything you’ve kept hidden. Starting with the fact that, for a long time, you _did_ want to destroy the world, as much as he did. That you didn’t understand why you were alive or why. That it was only the guidance of something that you could never possibly explain that led you and Frisk away from a path of destruction that, for all you know, in some other reality, that you’d already done or had yet to do.

Would it make anything better, to share that with him? Or would it only be even worse, to tell him that you only “saved the world” because Something Else told you to? Would he think that you didn’t love him after all, when you did love him, more than anything, more than anyone?

“You’re so strange, Chara,” he says, interrupting your thoughts.

“And yet, here we are,” you reply with a small, hopefully casual shrug.

“You know I wouldn’t have you any other way.”

You reach up and hug him back, squeezing him as tightly as you can.

“I wouldn’t have you any other way either, Ree,” you say, even though it goes without saying.

The train bounces slightly, causing you to nearly jump out of your shoes. You look out the window to see you’ve emerged from the tunnel - the moon is high in the sky, the stars are bright and clear, and the desert is lit by the light reflected off the sun. A family of wolves stares at the train, or perhaps at you, as it passes.

“You’re the same as me,” you say, not letting go of the hug. “I know you could never really destroy the world.”

He shifts. “But...”

 _I almost did,_ he wants to say, you know, and what do you even say to that, when you almost did yourself?

“No ‘but’s,” you say firmly. “You’re not the monster you make yourself out to be either. We were just dumb kids, made to shoulder a burden neither of us were ready for. That’s all. No matter what horrible shit we did or wanted to do, we still deserve forgiveness. Acceptance. A second chance.”

The train bounces again, violently.

And Asriel squeezes you as tightly to himself as he can, leans down, and kisses you.

The train bounces even more violently, and then, almost in slow motion, it tips over. Everything goes sideways as it falls, and falls, and falls, not into the ground but into inky blackness, and for every moment it falls, you continue to kiss Asriel, holding him tight to your chest, even gravity itself having no effect on you...

And you awake, with an extremely heavy, extremely furry weight on top of you, the tiled floor of the bedroom you share with Asriel beneath you. It takes you a moment to recognize the massive fur blanket on top of you as Asriel, wearing nothing but his heart-printed boxer shorts.

“Get _off_ me, you yeti,” you snap at him, and he rubs at his eyes and yawns.

“I thought you...” he starts to say, while still yawning, and you reach up to the bed above him and stuff a pillow against his face.

_“Not another word.”_

Once Asriel has got to his feet and you’ve brushed the mountains of fur off your pajamas, you climb back onto the bed.

“So... Victorian dresses,” you say. He doesn’t even look startled, and why would he be? It’s not the first dream you’ve shared since you got artificial souls from Alphys.

“You looked good in a top hat,” he says, and then smiles as he plops down next to you, the mattress sinking under his weight. “Did you really mean what you said? About... about letting me burn down the world.”

“Oh, planning on some arson?” you say, nudging him with your elbow. “Save it for the cookies, you pyromaniac.”

“Chara, I’m serious.”

You sigh. Fine. OK. Fine. It’s not a conversation you want to have, but...

“Yes. I meant every word. I’ve told you so many times, Ree... I’d follow you until the ends of the Earth.”

“Well, I don’t _want_ to burn down the world,” he says, somewhat childishly, as if he’s saying ‘I don’t want broccoli.’ “Not if you don’t want me to.”

Some part of you recognizes that's immensely unhealthy of him. Unhealthy of both of you, really. But since when was your relationship ever healthy? You'll burn that bridge later.

“Well, lucky for you, I don’t want to, so you don’t have to worry about that.”

He turns to you and smiles softly, and you take one look at that smile and decide it’s time to make do on that promise you made before.

You turn to him on the bed, raise yourself up so that you’re closer to his considerable height, and brush a hand down the fur of his cheeks.

He blushes, of course.

“Let’s settle for burning down the house instead,” you say, with a smirk that barely hides that you’re blushing just as badly.

And you kiss him, grabbing him by the shoulders and dragging him down onto the bed. He blushes furiously, but then he wraps his paws in your hair and kisses you back.

You think, as you both lay back against the sheets, that you’re going to have so much fur on you in the morning.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Ivy for betaing my first draft of this!
> 
> The songs are:
> 
> Far Away - Jose Gonzales  
> Autoclave - The Mountain Goats  
> Take The Journey - Molly Tuttle


End file.
